Major Post 11: Different forms of animation

Posted on by Sammy Liu

Light and Shadow

This class we learnt about Alexandre Alexeieff who invented Pinscreen, which is a method that uses a lot of pins with different lengths in protrusion to create light and dark spaces. This technique allows for more flexibility in lighting and three-dimensional space – an aspect that requires more time in Cell Animation.

His works: The Nose (1963)
NFB: Mindscape (Pinscreen too)

Our second artist is Caroline Leaf – one of the earliest animators who used sand to animate. She had a low artistic background but during one of her art classes where her teacher asked them to bring stuff in, she brought in sand. Leaf carried on experimenting with sand and her technique has certainly inspired many more down the generation of artists – for example:

Which is sOO cool and expressive. I think similar to the Pinscreen technique – light and shadow and three dimensional space is something that’s achieved faster too.

The last artist that I will mention here is William Kentridge, a South African Artist, famous for his prints.
We had noticed in class, how most experimental animators have Fine Art backgrounds, and Kentridge is another example of that transition in professions.
His piece, Felix in Exile (1994) expresses social issues in his country, South Africa, and explores the physical and mental struggle of those times.
A rather uncanny source of his inspiration for his creations comes from using “other people’s pain as rare material” – Kentridge.
This stood out to me because at my first impression it sounded rather inappropriate and possibly insensitive, yet actually, with further thought, with appropriation perhaps the artists can portray it in a way that could be healing, or at the least, acknowledged.

In this video, he talks about how he uses charcoal because “you can change charcoal as quickly as your mind changes” pulling in the idea of spontaneity again; a mind-set similar to our previous artist, Norman McClaren.

Class notes:
William Kentridge
Felix in Exile (1994)
History of the Main complaint (1997)
Eyewash (1959) – Rober Breer
Fuji (1974)
Jake’s Professor – COMMUTER – Matt Patterson
George Dunning – Yellow Submarine (1968) designed by Hienz Edelman
Also Founder of TVC in London.
Paul Driessen –
The End of World in Four Season – multiple frames (like a comic book style) moving at the same time.
The Killing of an Egg (1977)
Frederic Back – Cel overlays. Colouring pencils on frosted cells.
Frederick Back – Crac (1981)

MJP 11: Chinese animation

Posted on by hazelyin

During class we had learnt about the development of Chinese animations. In the last century, artists was greatly supported and sponsored by the Chinese government so that they could successfully learn from US animations and started creating some local creation with Chinese traditional elements such as the plot and art style. “Monkey King” is a household name in China as a traditional fairy tale character and the story about his journeys is always a common theme for Chinese animations. Other than that, Chinese ink wash painting was used in animation at that time as a unique art style of China. I like that style very much and “Little Tadpoles Look for Their Mom” is my favourite film. The animals are really cute at that short and the ink wash painting looks stunning. When I was young, I had learnt about Chinese traditional painting and calligraphy for a long time and I never imagine we can use it in animation. People at that time were really ambitious and capable!

I guess cultural revolution is always a disgusting history to me as a Hong Kong people since I know that China used to be such a strong country in many culture aspect and creative field. It is definitely a sad thing to hear cultural revolution occurred and ruined all those good stuff.

Hazel Wong

Major Post 10: Stop-Motion

Posted on by Sammy Liu

We shifted from looking at using single lines to using objects, and more 3D/manual based forms of animation (stop-motion). The class screened various influential animators who demonstrated foundational techniques fo future artists to build on.

Artists include:
Arthur Melbourne-Cooper – Matches Appeal (1899)

Ladislaw Starewicz – Soviet animator
Starewicz had a scientific background, and his work stemmed from wanting to document two stag beetles in battle.
His contribution in stop-motion techniques has been inspiring many to continue to develop the possibilities with stop-motion.

Willis O’Brien
O’Brien started the merge of live-action and stop-motion; basically the beginning of VFX.
Very impressively, one of his first works was a adaptation of King Kong, called “Mighty Joe Young” (1949). He named his style of work Dynamation, which kick started off the possibility of all future science-fiction anomalies, greek mythical tales, and superhero action.

George Pal – A Hungarian animator and filmmaker (1939).
He started Puppetoons – which the technique that replaces facial expressions on a puppet. The technique is continued by LAIKA in Coraline, ParaNorman, The Boxtrolls.
We watched his work, “Jasper And The Haunted House” (1942) which demonstrated a lot of cinematography. He was very aware of lighting, colour, perspective and composition – a step up to quality entertainment.

Professor also mentioned NFB again, a company that sponsored many of these artists. Channel4 in UK is a similar platform that carries on supporting contemporary artist creativity, especially in the commercial/T.V. world.

Sammy Liu

Major Post 9: Subconsciousness and Consciousness

Posted on by Sammy Liu

We watched Norman McClaren’s Documentary and it brought up a lot of noteworthy, inspiring nuggets and food for thought. He is an experimental filmmaker who was largely inspired by Scottish weather in its gentle changes in lighting, and nature, which he said was made by the ‘Original Creator’ – a statement which I found touching and intimate.

Like many artists, McClaren was a deep, soul-digging person who believed that Abstract Film frees you from constrictions of logic. He described animation as something which “rejoiced that it was drawn by just a line and that it could move”, and that abstract films were like watching thoughts.
He says he wouldn’t know what was gonna happen in 10 mins from now

“Subconscious plays a very important role.”
His thoughts included ideas such as how our Subconscious probably has the whole thing [scene] already, but it’s Consciousness’s job to put it into the real world yet, it could be contaminated by conscious’s logic, doubts or worries.
McClaren’s thoughts reminded me of how animators, or humans in general live in a space where they have the ability to control and yet, have so many other aspects that are out-of-control too. It seems like animation is a format where we can play around with those aspects.

Major Post 8: Composition of Movement

Posted on by Sammy Liu

We looked at a lot of Experimental Animators this class:

Jules Engel worked in Fantasia – UPA – Paris –
Founder of the Experimental Animation Program, CalArts.
He was exploring an abstract or a commercial path.

Mary Ellen Bute worked with no camera, she drew directly on the frames of the film – which is tiny. She was one of the first female experimental filmmakers and believed that the general public would appreciate visual art as such, therefore convinced the Radio City Music Hall, NY, to screen her abstract films regularly, in the 1930s.

Her piece called Rhythm In Light (1934) was described as “a pioneer effort of new art form”, something to appreciate and respect. Her style consists of many geometric, 3D objects, as well as light being a major element, using reflections and refraction bounced off the prisms. These two features combined, along with her ‘mathematical system’ performed to create this piece, makes it visually very posh and refined.

In her next piece Escape, she introduces a more narrative production, with an orange triangle being the protagonist.
Other creations = Spook Sport (1939)

Len Lye (Leonard Charies Huia “Len” Lye from New York, was actually the first to use direct film, which stemmed from him being unable to afford a camera. I admire that story as he didn’t let lack of resources stop him from creating, instead it pushed him to think experimentally.

He is another example of a Fine artist transferring interest to being a film maker. This spurred when he moved to London and joined “Seven and Five Society”.

Len Lye’s other works include:
“The Colour Box”
“Rainbow Dance” (1936) – Silhouette performance. Bold, Entertaining, Colourful, Combined live-action
“Colour Cry” (1953)

Lastly, we looked at Norman McLaren from the GPO Film Unit.
Founder of animation in NFB (Canada, 1941 – now), a company that’s sponsoring still. He made Boogie Doodle (1940) – The music is digital and pixilated at the beginning, in fact, later on he inspired pixilation.


Some quotes of his, that stood out to me:
“Problem with making a surreal film is to be constantly improvising”

He talked about how surrealism is like drawing out of the subconscious and how his subconsciousness is a heavy source of artistic inspiration.

From my understanding, he says something along the lines of how surrealism is cutting down the conscious control when creating.
I love that because there’s a massive sense of freedom in being able to do that. We are taught to be planners, organisers which are all valid and needed, yet it’s refreshing to have a balance of being completely and utterly spontaneous – living in spur of the moment. As demonstrated in ‘Boogie Doodle’ (1940) and a bit in ‘Hen Hop’ (1942).


Fun Fact: McLaren stayed in a farm for long period of time when creating ‘Hen Hop’ – I want to do that too.

Blinkity Blank (1955) – McLaren moves into using finer lines and even more varied colours, compared to Hen Hop and Boogie Doodle.

Neighbours (1952) using pixilation technique.
People argued whether this should be counted as a documentary rather than an art piece as it uses a peculiar technique.

Class Notes:
We touched on how many curious artists move from, e.g. a painter or musician, into animation.
Comic -> Animation
Painter -> visual timeline to make a moving visual
Music -> Visual music
Disney -> commercial and experimental side

Abstract/Experimental VS Narrative
What’s the meaning of experimental animation (spirit of exploring, possibly quite bizarre, takes time to understand)

major post 08: Neighbours

Posted on by hazelyin

During class we watched some pixilation animation before starting our next project. “Neighbours” is a pretty cool one made in the earily age 1952. When I watched the clip, I laughed a lot and enjoy it very much. It involved tons of crazy thoughts and dramatic performance such as the fences fight or the makeup on the men’s faces at the last few minutes. I really wonder about how they made the film since some imaginary sense like two men floating in air looks pretty hard to complete (the actors had to jump really high otherwise they need a special camera angel?). Those creative elements made the film really entertaining and hilarious.

Then I googled more information about the film and surprisingly found that is actually an anti-war film! The eight-minute film was politically motivated and inspired by Mao’s revolution in China and the Korean war. I guess that’s why the artist made the film title in various languages! This reminded me political issues is always around us and about us. I am very impressed that the artist made such an educational animation with such a fun and crazy way to convey.

Hazel Wong

Major Post 7: UPA

Posted on by Sammy Liu

UPA – United Productions of America (1943)
Founded by Zack Schwarts, David Hilberman, and Stephen Bosustow

UPA is rather design and style orientated, compared to Disney’s more realistic style. After their start up; which was focused on industrial and World War 2 films, they eventually made many original characters, stories, and short films starting from around 1956 and won commercial success.

I really loved UPA’s Brotherhood (1946) , it shared a lot of awareness for issues of equality. A favourite quote from that video was along the lines of needing to ‘practice’ that brotherhood as well as just ‘knowing’.

UPA’s design-driven visuals to spread information, influences many now. Their heavy use of shapes led to more abstract works, which continued to be used everywhere today – mostly within informative subjects.
Below is one of my favourite projects, in which animation is used to explain facts in a way where it’s much easier to absorb.

Even in styles, UPA and the video above, has similarities: the lack of outline and heavy silhouette orientated mind-set allows information to be the focal point, rather than detailed, realistic visuals.

Class notes:
Outline used in specific areas (E,g, John Hubley’s Robin Hood – no outline for BG but has outline for characters to make the stand out).
John and Faith Hubley – after being fired by UPA in 1952, they did not give up and started Storyboard Production in commercials.
Edgar Allen Poe – creepy “The Tell-Tale Heart”

Major Post 3: Object Animation and Mystical Visions

Posted on by Bobbi Ho

I want to applaud everyone in class for their object stop motion animations, they were done very well. They had really unique and different storylines. I didn’t know what to expect, considering this was the first project, and I was genuinely surprised. It was entertaining to watch and hear how each story came to life.

There is a scene in Disney’s Ratatouille (2007), where Remy (the main character) and Emile (Remy’s brother). are imagining what the visual of taste would look like as they savor each thing they eat. I was reminded of this scene when watching the abstracting scenes of Diagonal Symphony (1924) by Viking Eggeling. It was even more apparent in Oskar Fischinger’s animation studies. A lot of his studies reminds me of the old Disney films with the background music, playful and bouncy. The music joining the animations adds a nice touch of unity. Where as watching Radio Dynamics (1942), was awkward but nice to watch.

WIP :Stop Motion

Posted on by Bobbi Ho

Cameron and I had a hard time coming up with an idea/concept. Which was the basic first step to creating our stop motion. I had gathered a lot of reference videos from YouTube to get inspiration. Cameron and I got some ideas from them but ultimately decided to use the stuffed animals that I already had, to save time and money. We did a quick brainstorming session before we just went ahead and shot the frames, going along with different things as we continued.

We ran into some trouble, in regards to the different angles to shoot the extremely short film. While also having difficulties with our figures, for one was not as easy to move.

Bobbi Ho

Cameron Gordon

PQA – Alberto Mielgo

Posted on by Claude Lau

Alberto Mielgo is a Spanish animator, director, concept artist and painter. He came to my attention because of two recent major mainstream projects he was involved in: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse (2018), and the episode “The Witness” in the Netflix adult animation anthology Love Death + Robots (March 2019).

Mielgo started out as a 2D animator at 18, but turned to oil painting when he found studios wanted CGI/3D. His oils are mostly personal, erotic portraits; he also digitally paints graphic, vibrant environments. Thus he has a strong painting base, which shows in his style.

He is credited in Spider-verse as a Visual Consultant for his work in the visual development process, and was originally Production Designer / Art Director. He did explorations of the film’s iconic comic-book aesthetic, including integrating text (which he’d done in earlier work), and produced a tone/mood animation test. Though he was taken off the project, I think his contribution and influence can be clearly seen in the final film. More work he made for Spider-verse here.

spm02.jpg
There are many impact shots in Spider-verse that are similar to this one, where for a frame the background becomes flat colors and sound effect text.

I find his work very intriguing because of his strong design sense, and his ability to abstract shapes and light in highly descriptive, convincing ways. Which makes his style so fitting for animation. His animations draw from aesthetics and themes more used in fine art. In his own words, “I love animation over any art, because it has every art on it.” [Grammar mistake is his.]

His socials and websites:
https://www.instagram.com/albertomielgo/
http://www.albertomielgo.com
http://pinkman.tv (his brand/studio)

I hope you guys found something interesting in his work!